Saturday, August 29, 2009

LOUIS: "Gozer the Traveler. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldrani, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!"

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Enough cannot be said for clubs. What would these youths be doing if they were not in Thaispinner? One can only imagine. However, through the magic of this club, these pen spinning enthusiasts are able to share their passion and dexterity. By the way, specially weighted pens specifically designed for spinning? Sick idea, boys. Also, give the Bangkok Children's Museum credit for allowing these athletes to use their hallway; they are providing a venue for the future of the sport, where new moves will be devised, records will be broken, and young people will push each other to greatness.

If you can read Thai and would like more information about Thaispinner, how to acquire Thaispinner apparel, or pen spinning in Southeast Asia, visit them on the web at

Saturday, August 22, 2009

is an exhibition of conceptual art at The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Curated by Peter Eleey, it runs through September 27, 2009. The following words and images are from The Walker's website, www.walkerart.org.

Surveying art that tries to reach beyond itself and the limits of our knowledge and experience, The Quick and the Dead seeks, in part, to ask what is alive and dead within the legacy of conceptual art. Though the term “conceptual” has been applied to myriad kinds of art, it originally covered works and practices from the 1960s and ‘70s that emphasized the ideas behind or around a work of art, foregrounding language, action, and context rather than visual form. But this basic definition fails to convey the ambitions of many artists who have been variously described as conceptual: as Sol LeWitt asserted in 1969, conceptual artists are “mystics rather than rationalists.” Although some of their work involves unremarkable materials or even borders on the invisible, these artists explore new ways of thinking about time and space, often aspiring to realms and effects that fall far outside of our perceptual limitations.

The exhibition title derives from a biblical phrase describing the judgment of the living and the dead at the end of time. But it has been used in innumerable ways since, including by the designer and engineer R. Buckminster Fuller, who in 1947 lauded what he called the “quick realities” of modern physics, condemning the “dead superstitions” of classical, object-based Newtonian theories. This distinction between objects and events underlined many conceptual practices of the late 1960s and ‘70s that pressed at the edges of the discernable—the work of artists like George Brecht, who seamlessly transformed objects into motionless events and asked us to consider “an art verging on the non-existent, dissolving into other dimensions;” Lygia Clark, whose foldable sculptures sought to dissolve the boundary between inside and outside, each “a static moment within the cosmological dynamics from which we came and to which we are going;” and James Lee Byars who, obsessed with a magically gothic idea of perfection that included metaphorical enactments of his own death, declared that “the perfect performance is to stand still.”

With an international group of 53 artists in a range of media, The Quick and the Dead expands beyond the here and now, reaffirming conceptual art’s ability to engage some of the deeper mysteries and questions of our lives. The exhibition brings together more than 90 works, juxtaposing a core group from the 1960s and ‘70s with more recent examples that might only loosely qualify as conceptual. Included in the show are new works made specifically for the exhibition and a number that have not been previously shown or realized. The presentation expands beyond the Walker’s main galleries to its public spaces, parking ramp, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, and the nearby Basilica of Saint Mary.